DAY 42 / GAME 42 Super Mario Kart

DAY 42 / GAME 42

Super Mario Kart

            How have I put off one of the finest local multiplayer games ever?  Until Denise reminded me just now, I had almost forgotten about it.  Which seems odd because Super Mario Kart is a staple in my regular gaming rotation.  I mean, this game has seen action regularly since it was first purchased.  And when I say this I mean specifically the very same cartridge from the 90s.  

          Super Mario Kart uses Nintendo's Mode 7 graphics tech to create the kind of solid racer that you rarely see on 16-bit systems.  The same graphics tech I mentioned earlier that was responsible for F-Zero, only this time it's a little tamer of a racer.  Tamer in terms of speed, but not fun.  Mario Kart was built to be a multiplayer game and a great one at that.  I've spent weekends playing this with my brother and my cousin when we were kids and spend years playing this game regularly with my wife, Denise.  (Who has been known to kick my butt on occasion.)  


          Mario Kart is just this really solid title.  It takes a ton of great elements from everyone's favorite Super Mario Brothers titles, including music, level design and character selection.  It places them all in a perfectly thought out, well controlled title that you can just pick up and a play over and over again; as it's so proven of itself over a period of almost 20 years.  Even with all the other newer titles, (some of which are very, very good) this one is still my favorite and I highly recommend it.  As I tend to, of all 365 games.

DAY 41 / GAME 41 Mass Effect

DAY 41 / GAME 41

Mass Effect

           Mass Effect is one of those brilliant western action RPGs that exist in so few numbers.  I remember when it first came out, I was instantly sold by the trailer.  It seems to me that Mass Effect took a little while to actually gain popularity.  I remember at first having to really explain what was so amazing about the game to everyone, trying to get someone else to play it so I could have someone else to talk to about this incredible game.  I gave up for a bit and that's when suddenly everyone started into it.  So of course, I had to go back and start it again since I had forgotten so much of the story.

        Mass Effect was particularly brilliant.  Like a lot of RPGs it's an almost dauntingly large game.  It's no Oblivion, but the amount of content in this game is outstanding.  The sheer number of different characters you run into, each with his/her/it's own backstory.  Bioware put an inordinate amount work into explaining the tech behind the universe; you can spend hours reading their codex on anything from how their weapons work to their explanation on a ship's heat signature, to their idea of faster than light travel.  Each planet you encounter has a lengthy description and the wide range of alien species are vast and diverse.  Mass Effect may be my favorite science fiction universe since Star Wars, with Dead Space rolling up as a close second.  

        The first installment had this great subplot, you see, while you were busy trying to stop a rogue Spectre and his evil plot; you were also dealing with this future issue of racism.  So there was this great element you could take part in by either commanding without respect your alien crew across the galaxy, or defend your choice to work with a myriad of races in an attempt to unlock the secrets of the universe.  (Wow, that was a mouthfull.)  There was so much going on in Mass Effect, all these great little stories and characters that come together in the end and as part of the larger trilogy story.  

        Mass Effect offers some of the most complex and charming relationships.  I attended a retrospective panel at PAX East in 2013 hosted by various staff from Bioware, I can honestly say that I got at least the littlest bit choked up during that presentation and I'm sure I wasn't the only one.  The thing with the writing and the design of a game like Mass Effect is that even more than any movie or book or play, there is some serious emotional investment in the characters on the player's part and it only gets better with the subsequent titles.

        Put all that aside, all that that would make a perfect game in simply one element, then add an absolutely incredible soundtrack, amazing, unique architecture and tech design.  A wide variety of well thought out alien creature designs and gorgeous, memorable environments.  I can honestly say that Mass Effect is one of my all-time favorite games.  I'm talking, top-ten favorites.  I adore it and I adore the expansive world they created.

DAY 40 / GAME 40 Chrono Trigger

DAY 40 / GAME 40

Chrono Trigger

           Chrono Trigger is another one of those games that I really missed out on back on the Super Nintendo.  Turns out it's a favourite for a lot of SNES owners.  I never did get a copy when it was first out for a couple reasons.  First off, I had never heard of it at the time.  Secondly, even if I had heard of it, I wasn't at all interested in RPGs at the time, especially JRPGs.  (Japanese RPGs, which tend to be more difficult, more complicated and more obscure.)

             So, very recently, I was talking to a friend of mine at work, Peter, about how I had tried the demo for SquareSoft's new game Bravely Default.  Which I was actually very happy with.  I found this surprising because I always try to get into JPRGs but it never really works out for me.  So Pete told me I'd probably like Chrono Trigger and promptly lent me his copy that was rereleased for the Nintendo DS handheld, which he happened to have with him at the time.  He had it with him, because he played it regularly, even if he's already played it a ton since it came out.  

Like a lot of games on the SNES, Chrono Trigger took advantage
 of the Mode 7 graphics for scenes like this.

               So I loaded it up and at first it felt like your typical JRPG. Or at least, from what I know of them.  With no real introduction, you wake up in your bed at your parent's house and go to the fair.  You meet some girl and then promptly end up travelling through time to save her from being sucked into the middle ages.  Of course.  But all of that fell away as I shortly became engrossed in one of the finest RPGs I've ever played.  Chrono Trigger is easy to get into for a non-rpg player.  With no real tutorials or manual (that I had on me) I was surprised I never did get stuck at all.  In fact, I'm writing this now as I had just beat the game after about 20 odd hours put into it.  

               I was impressed.  Lately I've been playing Super Nintendo games for the first time that I hadn't played when the first came out.  Games like Link to the Past and Super Metroid.  I always assumed that I would never enjoy them much.  A lot of times, playing older games is only enjoyable if you've already played when they first came out.  Quite often games are playable because at the time every game had a standard for controls and rules and so playing decades later can mean some frustration.  But with Chrono Trigger, I had a hard time putting this one down.  

                  I really loved this game and I'm very happy that I made the time to play it. Going back and enjoying old games like this proves to myself that it's possible for games to be properly timeless.  I've mentioned timelessness before here, but I'm usually talking about playing games I've enjoyed in the past.  But properly enjoying a game without the 'nostalgia glasses' really speaks wonders about the quality of that game.

DAY 39 / GAME 39 Worms

DAY 39 / GAME 39

Worms

           The original DOS version of Worms was a fantastic 'artillery strategy' game that supported up to 4 players locally.  The game was about a meg in size, if I remember correctly and was easy to just have a copy on you.  Your worms were placed randomly about a 2D map that was a cut of a vertical cross section.  So the whole game was about planing perfect arcs and tossing grenades or rockets at the opposing team members, without accidentally blowing yourself up.

You had the chance to name your whole team.

             Worms was a nice little game for a group to sit around one person's computer and take turns at the keyboard.  I remember doing this quite a bit as a kid; having to play two-player games on the PC by sharing a keyboard.  I think Worms 2 was probably the last time I'd ever play local multiplayer on a PC.  

             The original Worms copy I had come with a bunch of preloaded sound fx sampled from various movies for when your worm did something during a turn.  I'm not sure if those were added later, or were part of the original product, but being able to change those things later was always a neat idea.  You could also use a bitmap image and it would turn it into the level.  (Some worked better than others.)  But I'm not one-hundred percent sure if that was worms 1 or 2.  

               I used to play this one the most with two friends of mine from high-school, Mike and Trevor.  This game really never did get old.  Even after I had 'accidently' pressed the fire button on someone elses turn, blowing up most all of their team and promptly received a shot to the arm.  

              Worms is one of those games that used a very basic game idea.  An idea that has made it's way like a simple machine into more complex games.  It was a ton of fun and simple enough that it was easy to enjoy with little effort.  It's the basis of a large group of mobile games like Angry Birds; games that are cheap, simple and easy to enjoy by a large audience.  It's neat to have been around when games like this were new and seeing their influence today.

DAY 38 / GAME 38 Journey

DAY 38 / GAME 38

Journey

           Journey may be one of the most beautiful, playable works of art I've ever enjoyed.  It has been out for almost two years now and I've only just gotten around to playing it just the other day.  The thing about Journey is that it's one of those games that you have to experience yourself.  No matter how much it had been recommended to me, no matter how beautiful everyone told me it was, I still wasn't prepared for sensory feast that flowed from my console.

            Journey was made by the same company that created Flow and Flower.  Both games deviate quite a bit from the norm. They almost fall into the grouping of games that take the term 'interactive art' quite literal.  Games where you find yourself only barely controlling the 'experience' that tells a short story or delivers a message, but you aren't really playing anything.  These games are usually very cheap, or free and are more of an experiment than anything.  Flow and Flower at least had a very basic sense of game structure as you emerged yourself in the gorgeous visuals.  

             Journey takes what they've learned from their previous titles and applied it to a stronger structure.  Although the game is very straightforward and linear, requiring very little problem solving; it's still structured around puzzles and story.  In the end you've ingested a wonderful experience.  Taking only a couple hours to play through, it's quick and easy to enjoy.  Any longer and I don't think it would have been as impressive.  

             Leia and I were looking for a games to play and I hadn't tried this yet, but I had grabbed it for my PS3 already on sale.  We started it one night and only turned it off because we had to.  Both of us were completely glued to the screen, I know that Leia doesn't necessarily have any expectations for games like I do, but I swear she was just as floored as I was by the visuals, the music and the brilliant atmosphere of it all.  We were completely charmed by it.  With no dialogue or complex cutscenes both of us knew exactly what story was being told.  I was actually quite surprised as Leia started piecing it all together out loud.  

            Like I said, Journey is a brilliant, playable work of art.  Though a little more into in the literal sense than I usually like to promote.  I would absolutely recommend anyone with a PS3 take a few hours to play through this.

I could honestly go on about this game a lot longer.

DAY 37 / GAME 37 Sewer Shark

DAY 37 / GAME 37

Sewer Shark

How could you not buy that?

           This was bound to come up eventually.  Say what you will about the short-lived genre of live action video based games, they certainly seemed like the future at the time.  I remember watching a news report on tv about the behind the scenes process of filming for a video game.  It seemed pretty neat and it really felt like the next logical step for gaming to me; then again, I was about 12 at the time.

            My brother bought Sewer Shark, of course.  He always bought the weirdest games simply from the look of the back cover.  It was a game for the Sega CD where (for those of you who haven't played it) you are hired to fly through the sewers are wipe out infestations for some rich fat dude.  It was super over-the-top with ridiculous B-movie acting and story.  It's like Top Gun in the sewers.  Everyone's got a call-sign.  Your copilot gets 'Ghost' and you're stuck with 'Dogmeat'.  At the start of each little section, he calls out 4 turns in succession and when they come up you have to steer at them or risk a crashing and a fiery death.  All the while you have to shoot vermin off the walls of the sewer using slow d-pad controls.  
            But here's the best part.  This game was ok, and it would have got it's little bit of play time.  But when we played this game in front of my dad during our weekend at his place, he got hooked.  It was one of those things that just digs at you, like when I play Surgeon Simulator, where you just HAVE to beat it because you're soo close.  It was your reflexes that failed, or your method, or something you'd better shape up this time around before the level loads again because this game isn't going to beat you, is it?
           So my dad tried everything.  This really was his game now.  He even got us to help him by writing down the pace notes and firing them back as the turns came up.  Eventually we had to pack it up and go back home but he had convinced us to leave the system with him.  He had a week off work, or called in sick I'm not sure and spent the week hammering this game until he had done the impossible.  He beat it.  We didn't believe him when he told us.  Regaling some fiction about how you all end up at this beach in Solar City or whatever and you all dump a cooler  of ice and water on your fat boss.  It sounded pretty made up.  It wasn't until very recently that I had thought, now with the power of the internet, to look up the ending to see if he was telling the truth or not.  Turns out, he may be one of the only people on the planet that beat that game.   

                It's funny, because games like this, with their ridiculous b-movie acting are probably lost to the ages.  And yet, if someone came up with something like this that was technically up to date, I think there'd definitely be a market for it.  My dad can't be the only one.

DAY 36 / GAME 36 Starship Titanic

DAY 36 / GAME 36

Starship Titanic

           There's two kinds of people in the gaming world.  People who have played Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic and people who have a gaping void in their soul.  This may seem like a trend, but this is yet another game that was introduced to me by my uncle.  I then went on to borrow it from him and never return it, I feel terrible, and yet, it's still on my shelf.  I'd probably feel better if I actually managed to beat it.

          Starship Titanic was half graphic adventure half text adventure.  You explored the doomed Titanic who's only inhabitants are insane robots, in an attempt to fix the ship.  You had to converse with the different robots to solve most of the puzzles.  I'm still amazed how well the conversation engine works in games like that.  I had a blast trying all kinds of silly things to figure stuff out.  I even had to sweet-talk the receptionist into giving me a room upgrade, it was a ton of fun.  

            The entire game is beautifully designed.  Everything has a strong art-deco style, including all the robots that are typically designed as part of the surroundings.  The Receptionist is a desk lamp, there's a robot in the elevator who is part of the wall and of course, there's the Succ-U-Bus.  Apparently, an Oscar winning illustrator and a British architect were responsible for the games visual design.  It's certainly believable. 
            It's also nice that even though it's a text adventure, it's all been voiced.  Starship Titanic featured 14 hours of dialogue, including voice work by Terry Jones and John Cleese.  I'd love to see this kind of game make a comeback.  Adventure games like Myst were popular back in the 90's, but they totally fell off the map.  Publishers probably feel like no-one's interested in games like these, but recent releases like The Room prove otherwise.  The only trouble is games like The Room are very short and aren't nearly as deep and intricate as Myst or Starship Titanic since they are only budgeted for mobile platforms.  I can only imagine how brilliant a game you could build now, not having to rely on pre-rendered video.  You could do some really fun stuff with the environment and allow for some of the puzzles to be much more intricate.

I also discovered this site, which contains a ton of design material for the game.